Reading the crow post below, and laughing at the people trying to dissuade me. DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE DEALING WITH?
Telling me it is a bad idea only encourages me.
by John Cole| 83 Comments
This post is in: Readership Capture
Reading the crow post below, and laughing at the people trying to dissuade me. DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE DEALING WITH?
Telling me it is a bad idea only encourages me.
Comments are closed.
quakerinabasement
I missed that you were trying to attract squirrels. I’d be happy to send you the bunch that keep stealing my apples.
Spanky
Uh, yeah. Yeah. Bad commenters! You go for it, John! Just make sure you take pictures/video of the results.
Tony Jay
Hey, I said it was a great idea.
They’ll totally eat your eyes, though.
hells littlest angel
I think attracting crows is a great idea. Try leaving a few dead bodies scattered around your property.
toine
You should make friends with 1 crow…
Baud
Agreed. You won’t learn until a crow pecks out your eyeball. Then we’ll all have a good laugh about it.
Jeffro
It’s a good, no, GREAT idea. ???
Old Dan and Little Ann
John replying to me on Twitter about Crows made my day (I’ve had a boring day). I still find crows to be nothing but obnoxious.
raven
Ravens are smarter than crows. That is all.
BigJimSlade
It’s a beautiful idea, John.
I foresee much entertainment for us jackals.
Suzanne
Don’t plant the willow close to the house!
In all seriousness, crows are awesome and I approve of the plan
Also, side note: looking at Princes William and Harry separated by their cousin Peter Phillips, I am struck by how much hotter Peter Phillips is than either of them.
NotMax
Lingering artifact from your R-side days?
:)
MagdaInBlack
You do what’s right for you, John. Crows it is ! I look forward to the pictures and stories ?
Lige
We should trade yards I have plenty of both! I like them but they tend to interfere with my wife’s gardening. The crows really seem to have a thing against the little plastic tabs you use to identify what you’ve planted and are continually pulling them out.
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay: Alfred!
Bobby Thomson
If it’s good enough for the AllFather, it’s good enough for you.
Catherine D.
Hey, I love crows. We’d be neck deep in road kill without. And I talk to the ones who hang out in my yard. We get along very well.
trollhattan
I am offering free crows. Many, many free crows. Just say yes. They have California accents.
ETA also have a backyard willow, so there’s that. It does wonderfully, drinking directly from the sewer main. Just ask the city.
Omnes Omnibus
Hey, I encourage people to buy guitars. I will tell anyone that they will have no problem skiing that black run. I am an enthusiastic bad influence. So I say, get as many crows as you can. You have to be crazy not to.
NotMax
Don’t settle for halfway measures – get a turkey buzzard call.
“Make sure to tell the new kid we don’t go trick or treating at that house. Nuh-uh. No way.”
:)
NotMax
@Catherine D.
Half named Russell, the other half Sheryl?
;)
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
Hehe, roots.
Ella in New Mexico
We have about 500 nuisance White Winged Doves living in the trees in our backyard that cover everything below where they’re roosting in purple bird shit that I’d LOVE to find a way to get rid of…may be John would be interested in a humane relocation project?
Added Benefits:
1. 500 birds singing “who cooks for you?” all damn day long until you scream STFU at the top of your lungs
2. cats can’t get enough of their dumb-yet-tender morsel-asses so you have a daily explosion of feathers to clean up
3. They also randomly fly headfirst into your bedroom window jerking you awake at 7 am
Adam Lang
@Ella in New Mexico: My suspicion is that a half dozen crows would get rid of them in short order.
Albatrossity
Should be fun! But the timing might be off. The large winter flocks of crows are breaking up, and pairs of crows are scouting for nest sites right now. Maybe you can attract a rowdy bunch of young incel crows!
Please keep us posted!
karen marie
@Suzanne: I don’t know if it’s true but I read on twitter that the reason Phillips was between Harry and William is protocol – Phillips is the first-born of the three.
JMG
Our neighborhood on the Cape has many many crows, and they are attracted to a dead Cape oak tree in our back yard (really the tree line separating about three lots). Looks spooky as hell when they use it as a hang out.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
We had a turkey buzzard sitting on the peak of our roof when we got back from a walk the other day. It was not a pleasant sight.
Nice Marmot
You are not going to regret this project…crows are so smart (“the primates of the bird world”) and interesting.
A neighbour here in Vancouver (Canada) used to walk her dog a few blocks to buy a paper at the store, and a crow would follow them along, wait for her to come out of the store, and follow them back to our building.
I “meditate” (Rastafarian-style) for an hour each day in the woods right outside our place, and the crows, especially this time of year, are a great part of the forest.
Enjoy!!
Ella in New Mexico
@Adam Lang: Yes! On the rare occasion we’ve had crows come into the yard they aggressively chase them off and we literally cheer them on
Crows > Cats when it comes to doves
Ella in New Mexico
@trollhattan: The entire West would gladly trade our nuisance birds and invasive plants for just half the massive rainstorms that will hit our friends back east who think the former are so cool
Morzer
Of course, all the real corvid hipsters have moved on to magpies. Trust John to go aggressively retro in his pursuit of coolness. Joking aside, Seoul seems to have the largest population of magpies (and azure-winged magpies) in the world. Not many crows at all.
JMG
The one drawback to crows is that they fight off the hawks (they’re bitter enemies) that keep the rabbit population down in our neck of the woods. So vegetable gardeners don’t care for them.
Suzanne
@karen marie: That sounds plausible.
All I know is that that family really needs commoner DNA. The purebred ones are ugly AF. When they marry outsiders, the kids are way hotter. William is gross-looking now.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@raven:
Do you know this because you’re in actuality a sapient raven that uses your beak to tap on the keys of a keyboard? ?
bbleh
Oooh, ooh, does this mean we can call you John Crow?
”You know nothing, John Crow.”
@quakerinabasement: This. He can have ours too. I’m just glad he gave up on them.
MagdaInBlack
@Ella in New Mexico: Aw, my mother used ” who cooks for you ? ” referring to a dove call ?
Eta: Come to think of it, there’s an owl call she said that of too.
Ken
But are they trainable? Could a person — hypothetically, you understand — teach them to do his bidding, so he could stand on his front porch cackling and shouting “Fly, my pretties!” as the murder flaps and caws overhead toward its latest victim?
Gvg
I have quite a few crows, for reasons unknown. They find stale bread and large dog biscuits somewhere, and leave them soaking in my bird baths, which I don’t really care for. They poop on the deck, not amazingly bad, just part of homeownership. They also plant peanuts which then come up in odd places in my yard. I find that mildly funny. Not terrible aggravations, but not that interesting or attractive as birds go, IMO.
i haven’t noticed fewer squirrels than other houses. Florida has a lot of squirrels. So crows do not scare away squirrels. I would like to have fewer squirrels but nobody has ever managed that in Florida. Even hawks are just temporary. So I buy the more expensive bird feeders and baffles and try to cultivate patience.
Mallard Filmore
Here is a nice poem about a crow:
https://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/th2-crow.htm
Ted Hughes
1930-1998
“Crow’s Theology”
From “Crow”, 197
moops
You know how you have other birds in your area and how some of them nest in your yard and about your home? Yeah, when crows show up that all ends. Crows in urban and suburban habitats do not coexist with other birds. They eat them or drive them out. They also fail to fill all the niches in your local ecosystem that your former birds fulfilled. The only reliable predator in these ecosystems are raccoons and owls. Maybe you have enough of those in your area to manage your growing murder.
Catherine D.
@NotMax: Ha! No, more like MST3K “Croooww” They seem to recognize the call.
Ruckus
John, we like that you are opposite man.
That trying to talk you off the ledge only encourages you to step closer and closer.
Now the part that should be scary for you is that many may have recognized that in you and we are actually encouraging you with reverse logic, and not trying to talk you off the ledge.
Have you learned nothing about us through all these years?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ken:
LOL! I’ve always wanted to own a parakeet or a parrot because it would be so cool to have it repeat what you say
Just One More Canuck
It’s the same story the crow told me, it’s the only one he knows
MagdaInBlack
@Ruckus: I’m of the ” do what you want, you know you will anyway” school of thought. I think that applies well to John.
Probably just as well I’m not a parent ?
Ruckus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I knew a fella who owned a parrot.
Sat on his shoulder every where he went.
Nice runs of parrot shit all down the front/back of his shirt.
Did keep a lot of people from getting too close to him though.
bcw
Mixed feelings, circle of life and all that. Last year I had a Robin build a nest on an air conditioner under an eave right outside my window. I watched the eggs become chicks and grow to tennis ball size and start to flap their wings a bit before hearing a very angry Robin one morning and looking out to see a crow tearing over the lawn. The Robin squawked for an hour but the nest was empty. It turns out about 1/3 of crow’s diet is the young of other birds. I think this crow was just waiting for the young to reach lunch size.
chopper
on the upside the locals will call your place “murder house”
Another Scott
Do not get a capybara. Just don’t.
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Ooh, howzabout Herr Cole not getting honey badgers?
:)
JustRuss
I would say “Fine, but don’t come around here bitching when your crow experiment goes sideways,” except you own the damn blog. Oh well, at least it will be entertaining.
Maybe we can start a pool for when the first “Turns out this might not have been a great idea” post appears.
Morzer
@NotMax:
There can be only one!
Morzer
@JustRuss: I eagerly await the “Crows stole my mustard (probably)” post.
schrodingers_cat
@hells littlest angel: Getting a crow to eat a ritual offering is an important part of Hindu/Vedic death rites. If the crow doesn’t touch the ritual offering that means the dead person is worried about something, has some unfinished business.
Josie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I used to have a cockatiel who said “Woodstock’s a pretty bird” (his name) and ” Get that cat out of here!” (a favorite line from a Steve Martin movie). The funny thing was that when I moved him to the outdoor aviary, many of the mockingbirds picked up his vocabulary.
feebog
I have a bad feeling about this. They don’t call it a “murder” of crows for nothing ya know.
Morzer
@feebog: Steve is never going to move fast enough to catch a crow when it’s so much easier to pin Cole down and demand breakfast with menaces.
BeautifulPlumage
@Ella in New Mexico:
I had a good belly laugh at this
BeautifulPlumage
@Omnes Omnibus: So I say, get as many crows as you can. You have to be crazy not to.
Rotating tag line?
KrackenJack
You’re lucky if they just pluck an eye:
The Case of the Exploding Toads
Odie Hugh Manatee
Go ahead. Heck, if I could I would send you twenty or so from the murder that hangs out in our part of town. They love to find an unfortunate bird and harass it to death. If they’re within a half mile of us we can hear them every time they launch another attack. I was constantly picking up the poor targets feathers from our back yard up to when our tree was removed.
As was requested above, please record the results. Hell, stream it on Twitch!
Suzanne
@Another Scott:
OK, that is HILARIOUS.
Miss Bianca
@Morzer: I have a video of my late beloved Luna as a puppy, being decorously mobbed by a couple of magpies who would wait for her to come out onto the lawn of the apartment building where I was living at the time. They thought it was HIGH-larious to bounce up on her from behind and peck at her tail and then bounce away again before she could get at them, yakking it up all the way. It was high-larious, too, particularly as she merely got up and trotted away from the indignity.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: I’m so old, I remember Diana Spencer being considered a “commoner” when she married Charles!
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: That’s a fascinating tidbit of information. Is it then up to the dead person’s heirs to figure out what might have weighing on his or her mind?
(I could see that being a great premise for a mystery novel!)
Tony Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Hitchcock or Pennyworth?
Ken
Given the number of comments about “wish I could send you some of the noisy ones near me”, I’ll say when the Fedex fleet shows up outside John’s door with 800 boxes, all stamped “LIVE ANIMALS”.
Uncle Omar
I certainly wouldn’t want to dissuade you from this project, but it might be best to consult your feline master before going forward.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: Yes. And promises are offered. Don’t worry, I will take care of your cat…
Benw
Dude, listen, shaving your hair into a giant purple mohawk and going on tour with a punk band is a TERRIBLE idea and you should know better
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: Also a lot of off color jokes!
randal m sexton
‘random guy on the internet who reccomended padrons ‘ (me) — I have been making friends with the local crows for the last 1.5 years or so, since covid. I just leave peanuts out, on a fence rail and they love them. They seem to prefer the ones with shells on them. Salted, – cuz I like to eat them too – My garden is right near by, and they have not done any damage to the garden. Speaking of padrons, I just bought a bunch of them from summerwinds (local bay palo alto nursery) and they look suspiciously like something other than padrons. We will see. My Spanish wife/father in law may get upset.
billcinsd
Well believe me, Mike, I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid… and I went ahead anyway.
John “Crow T. Robot” Cole
p.a.
If he could figure out and bottle what makes his yard squirrel-proof, he could retire a millionaire while financing multiple animal rescue locations.
Ohio Mom
In my mind’s eye I see that visual meme of the young fellow walking down a crowded street with his girl, you know the one, his head is turned to ogle a passing young woman and his girl is furious.
Except the young fellow is Cole, he’s ogling a crow, and looking at him aghast are the parent songbirds who return to his front porch every year.
Morzer
I just hope this doesn’t end with the vanishing of the Cole tribe and the only clue being a cat-scratched note on a tree saying “Crowatoan”.
The Pale Scot
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
“Let’s frag the lieutenant! Let’s frag the lieutenant!”
“Lordy! He’s been to ‘Nam!”-
Ella in New Mexico
@BeautifulPlumage: I’m glad someone did lol
I’ve been told I’m allowed to shoot them with pellet guns but I can’t bring myself to do that. And I angry-cry any time one of my four feline monsters catches one of the babies that fell of of the nest while cursing their parents for choosing such a dangerous neighborhood to raise their children in
I just wish they’d go the far, far fuck away
Another Scott
@Ella in New Mexico: A few years ago, a mourning dove started trying to build a nest on top of the mailbox mounted on the siding by our front door. The rounded-roof metal box that people visit nearly every day… It got a couple of sticks to stay eventually before giving up, but I wondered what was going on in its tiny brain to start there in the first place…
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Nice Marmot
@Ken: Crows have highly developed problem solving skills, and It’s going to be fun hearing about the relationship John is about to get into! As for “training”, eh, that’s a two-way street…
Geo Wilcox
@Baud: Or when his garden is ransacked by them. Or he faces complaints from the neighbors and they hang fake owls and shiny strips of foil every where to get rid of them.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@Ken: There are people who have been training crows to pick up litter for food using a crow-friendly vending machine, so Maybe?